ALTERNATIVE ARCHITECTURE LENS

9/6/13

Berlin is a city of empty spaces from bombings and the deconstruction
of the wall. The voids in Berlin – a characteristic that inspired Oswald
Mathias Ungers’ “Berlin as the Green Archipelago” – have now, within increasing
population, become the focal points of densification and new urban speculation.
Cooperative building projects are built in the vacant spaces, and the concept
of void or openness is integrated into projects as common or programmed spaces.
Here are my fundamental questions for the research.

9/5/13

1. The failure of political
philosophy and the failure of architecture

The French
philosopher Jacques Rancière begins his book Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy with the question: “Is there
any such thing as political philosophy?”[i] He
argues that the Platonic and Aristotelian models of governance (the philosopher
kings or political parties) as well as modern versions of democracy – which he
would not label political, but an order of the police – are ultimately based
upon deceptions of the people and a dislocation of people’s imaginative
potential. For Rancière proper politics is not the agents of the politicians,
the parliamentary debates or voting procedure, or the institutions of the state
or departments of its operations. “Politics exists when the natural order of domination
is interrupted by the institution of a part of those who have no part.”[ii] Political philosophy, Rancière argues, has failed because it
falsely conceives the people and disguised the fundamental societal conflict
between the haves and the have-nots.

9/4/13

Hereis a critique of architecture. The first task of critique is to break
apart. The second is to put back together. We cannot overemphasize the latter
at the expense of the former. The architect’s task is usually one of designing
the objects of peoples’ environments, which makes analysis feel like dead
weight. A critique of architecture will oscillate between breaking apart
architectural production and putting together possibilities of future
arrangements, funding models, and politics of architecture. What would this oscillation look like? This
project is an attempt to follow “Marx’s work … as an exposé of the world turned upside down and the attempt
to right it.”[i]